Arthur and George

Arthur and George by Julian Barnes Page B

Book: Arthur and George by Julian Barnes Read Free Book Online
Authors: Julian Barnes
Tags: Fiction
bought a third-class ticket on a French train.”
    “Where was he going?” asks Maud.
    “It doesn’t matter where he was going.”
    “Why was he so fat?” demands Horace. This
ad hoc
jury seems to believe it may ask questions whenever it likes.
    “I don’t know. He must have been even greedier than you. In fact, he was so greedy that when the train pulled in, he found he couldn’t get through the door of a third-class carriage.” Horace starts tittering at the idea. “So next he tried a second-class carriage, but he was too fat to get into that as well. So then he tried a first-class carriage—”
    “And he was too fat to get into that too!” Horace shouts, as if it were the conclusion to a joke.
    “No, members of the jury, he found that this door was indeed wide enough. So he took a seat, and the train set off for—for wherever it was going. After a while the ticket collector came along, examined his ticket, and asked for the difference between the third-class fare and the first-class fare. Monsieur Payelle refused to pay. The railway company sued Payelle. Now, do you see the problem?”
    “The problem is he was too fat,” says Horace, and starts giggling again.
    “He didn’t have enough money to pay,” says Maud. “Poor man.”
    “No, neither of those is the problem. He had money enough to pay, but he refused to. Let me explain. Counsel for Payelle argued that he had fulfilled his legal requirements by buying a ticket, and it was the company’s fault if all the train doors were too narrow for him except the first-class ones. The company argued that if he was too fat to get into one kind of compartment, then he should take a ticket for the sort of compartment he could get into. What do you think?”
    Horace is quite firm. “If he went into a first-class compartment, then he has to pay for going into it. It stands to reason. He shouldn’t have eaten so much cake. It’s not the railway’s fault if he’s too fat.”
    Maud tends to side with the underdog, and decides that a fat Frenchman comes into this category. “It’s not his fault he’s fat,” she begins. “It might be a disease. Or he may have lost his mother and got so sad he ate too much. Or—any reason. It wasn’t as if he was making someone get out of their seat and go into a third-class compartment instead.”
    “The court was not told the reasons for his size.”
    “Then the law is an ass,” says Horace, who has recently learned the phrase.
    “Had he ever done it before?” asks Maud.
    “Now that’s an excellent point,” says George, nodding like a judge. “It goes to the question of intent. Either he knew from previous experience that he was too fat to enter a third-class compartment and bought a ticket despite this knowledge, or he bought a ticket in the honest belief that he could indeed fit through the door.”
    “Well, which is it?” asks Horace, impatiently.
    “I don’t know. It doesn’t say in the report.”
    “So what’s the answer?”
    “Well, the answer here is a divided jury—one for each party. You’ll have to argue it out between you.”
    “I’m not going to argue with Maud,” says Horace. “She’s a girl. What’s the real answer?”
    “Oh, the Correctional Court at Lille found for the railway company. Payelle had to reimburse them.”
    “I won!” shouts Horace. “Maud got it wrong.”
    “No one got it wrong,” George replies. “The case could have gone either way. That’s why things go to court in the first place.”
    “I still won,” says Horace.
    George is pleased. He has engaged the interest of his junior jury, and on succeeding Saturday afternoons he presents them with new cases and problems. Do passengers in a full compartment have the right to hold the door closed against those on the platform seeking to enter? Is there any legal difference between finding someone’s pocketbook on the seat, and finding a loose coin under the cushion? What should happen if you take the last train

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